


For the Lover that I Lost (and Found Once More)

by star13



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Andy | Andromache of Scythia Never Loses Immortality, Depression, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27905161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/star13/pseuds/star13
Summary: For hundreds of years, she’s kept a tight lid over her grief. It hurt too much - imagining how Quynh’s arms used to wrap around hers as they rode together in battle, how her eyes shone with delight when they sparred, how her eyes reflected the licks of the fire in the night as they shared a meal under the stars. It felt as though each thought of Quynh seared itself into Andy’s mind, and her guilt tasted like ashes and pierced through her heart like sharp arrows.Following Andy and Quynh during the before and after of their journey to find each other again.Inspired by Sam Smith's For the Lover that I Lost.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	For the Lover that I Lost (and Found Once More)

> Think about your lips and the way they kiss  
>  There's so much I really miss about you  
>  Sitting on the beach, you were still in reach  
>  And I haven't felt free without you

The sun’s warm light wraps itself around Andy, but she can’t help but stiffen when the waves gently lap at her skin. As she breathes in its salty air, the heat becomes suffocating, and her hands unknowingly clench into fists, nails digging into the center of her palms. Suddenly, the water is too cold, harsh like thorns jabbed into her thighs. Her feet feel like they’re going to be swallowed by the sand, and the thin seaweed that brushes against her side feels like stray strands of hair.

This is as far as she will go today. Staying longer will only make resisting the urge to sink more difficult, so Andy wrenches her gaze away from the tantalizing shimmers of water stretching out for miles. The sound of waves crashing against the sand behind her roars in her ears, drowning out what she is supposed to be hearing instead. Exhaling raggedly, she turns around to seek out the sight of her family. She’s certain that they will loosen the knot forming in her chest.

Nicky is sprawled out on his stomach under the shade of their beach umbrella, flipping lazily through a book Nile had bought at an art museum a few days before. His face is completely covered by the obnoxiously wide-brimmed straw hat Joe had bought for him at a street market in South Korea. “To protect your delicate skin, darling” he had teased as he plopped it on Nicky’s head.

As Andy returns to their little base, she watches Joe and Nile pass a frisbee between each other, having finished their sand castle moments before. Joe’s curls peek out of the baseball cap Nile got him for Christmas last year (it has a sun wearing sunglasses printed on the front), and she already knows he has it on backwards because Nicky likes his sun freckles.

Her breaths come easier when she hears Nile laugh gleefully at Joe’s comically wide-eyed expression before he trips over his feet in the sand. Her grin deepens when she watches Joe playfully growl and sweep Nile off her feet to start marching towards the ocean. The two had become so close to each other, bonding over coloring books and splatter paint projects (they used throwing knives to pop the balloons at Nicky’s suggestion for Nile to practice her aim); but, their closeness also came with a rivalry and mischief characteristic of siblings. 

By the time she settles on the beach towel next to Nicky, Joe is waist-deep in the water. The waves are just close enough to touch Nile’s back, and when Joe makes a sudden motion to drop Nile into the water. Nile shrieks, “Don’t you dare!” She wraps her arms around Joe’s neck tighter. “If you let me go, even Nicky won’t be able to protect you from the consequences!”

Joe’s entire body shakes with unbridled joy, and he walks a few steps back to shore before letting her down slowly. Andy watches Nile turn to Joe with the mischievous twinkle in her eyes that they all have gotten to know well in the past few years. It was the same look she had when she discreetly switched on the heater of the car seat Nicky was sitting on as they drove through Sydney earlier in the summer, and the same look before she started to ask questions like “What’s the dumbest way you’ve died?” and “So…who else that _I_ might know have _you_ known?” She had waggled her eyebrows as she asked that one, and Andy had thrown her potato chips at her in response.

_Oh,_ how Quynh would adore her.

_“Andromache! The old woman at the marketplace was selling persimmons, so now you can finally understand what they truly taste like!”_

_Some nights ago, Andromache had come across a tall tree with a fruit she had never seen before. It’s smooth, round shape made it seem like an apple from afar, but when she climbed the tree to take a closer look, she saw it had an orange-green tint. Still, it looked somewhat like an apple, so she had reasoned that the fruit must be a distant relative. Thinking of Quynh’s love for sweet tastes, she had picked a few to bring to her that afternoon._

_Upon returning home, she had began to wash and cut one to prepare for Quynh. Andromache’s curiosity got the better of her, however, and she had decided to try it before Quynh woke up from her afternoon nap._

_Never one for subtlety, Andromache had taken a large bite of the fruit._

_And Quynh had woken just in time to hear her curse and see her spit out the half-chewed morsel. “I will never rid my tongue of this bitterness,” Andy had thought, face pinched in sour disgust. It had felt as though all the moisture in her mouth had been taken away._

_Quynh had looked concerned when Andromache had leapt up to find a drink of water, but when she saw the remaining fruit on the table, her bright laughter had filled the entire room._

_“My heart, I appreciate the sentiment, but these are meant to be orange and soft when they are ready to eat,” she had said while doing her best (and failing) to stifle her giggles._

_“I just traumatized my tastebuds with this disgraceful excuse of a fruit, and you are laughing.”_

_“You are lucky they are not poisonous, or I would have laughed even louder,” she had chuckled. “This fruit is called a persimmon, and when they are ripe, I promise you - you will love them.”_

_And just as she had promised, Quynh showed her just how lucious and rich they were. They chuckled at how sticky their hands became when attempting to cut the fruit into slices, and their table quickly become a mess of sticky orange chunks and haphazardly scattered green star-shaped stems._

_“It’s like you picked stars from the sky and brought them home to me, Andromache.”_

_When Andromache sunk her teeth into the skin of the fruit, she threw her head back and moaned in pleasure at the burst of rich nectar and jelly-like flesh in her mouth. Her eyes flew open when she heard Quynh licking the juice sliding down her fingers. “The fruit can wait,” Andromache thought as she stroked Quynh’s hair behind her ear, suddenly hungry for something even sweeter. One peck on Quynh’s cheek led to several more peppered down her neck, and the kisses deepened into an indulgent, saccharine afternoon of tender touches and loving sighs._

_Quynh’s lips had tasted like honey that day._

“Andy.” 

The lingering caresses of Quynh’s fingertips idly drawing shapes on her skin dissipate with a breath of wind from the sea. 

Nicky closes the book and lays it gently beside him before sitting up next to Andy. He doesn’t say anything more, but Andy knows he is waiting for her. 

For hundreds of years, she’s kept a tight lid over her grief. It hurt too much - imagining how Quynh’s arms used to wrap around hers as they rode together in battle, how she crowed with delight when she bested Lykon in a horse race, how her eyes reflected the licks of the fire in the night as as they shared a meal under the stars. It felt as though each thought of Quynh seared itself into Andy’s mind. Her guilt tasted like ashes and pierced through her heart like sharp arrows. Although she had bravely weathered thousands of years of excruciating deaths, Andy had always shrunk in the face of Quynh’s memory.

It’s different now. 

Now, she cautiously takes out each moment and tries to remember them for what they were, casting away the shroud of mourning that had obscured them for so many years. She finds it ironic, how the most vivid memories are the ones she’s kept locked up, hidden away in the darkest depths of her mind. 

“You know I think of her most when we’re near the water.” She says slowly. Meeting Nicky’s eyes always felt like she was bearing her entire soul for him to see, so instead she fixates ahead on the line that divides the ocean and the sky.

Nicky is quiet for a moment before he gently asks, “Do you feel that it has become easier to be near the water?”

Andy brows furrow as she picks at her fingers. “I still wish I could drain the ocean to let her breathe, and I would take her place now if I could…” She tenses and hunches forward, curling into herself. “But the memories don’t burn anymore. They just ache.”

Nicky watches grief tumble off of Andy’s shoulders. He takes her hand and squeezes, hoping to give her a lifeline to keep afloat. “I can’t tell you that it will get better.” He inhales sharply. “…because it still hurts me to think of her, too.”

“But you haven’t let it consume you.” There’s a lump in her throat, and her hair falls over her eyes as she looks down at their clutched hands. “You lost two people that day. Quynh and the person I had been when I had her by my side.” 

From Nicky’s contemplative silence, Andy knows he is taking time to choose his words. Andy counts five waves that land and recede back to the ocean before he says, “Right before we lost consciousness at the lab, I thought they would take Joe away from me. I had only imagined the terror and fury you experienced when they took Quynh away from you…but in that moment…” He clenches his teeth, and his gaze turns sharp as he scans the beach to find Joe. 

Andy wraps an arm around Nicky and pulls him close. Their shoulders rise and fall in time, and soon the blossoming fear begins to wilt. Andy feels him relax as they watch Joe, wet shirt stuck to his skin and hat soaked to a darker blue, bound through the water after Nile, who has already reached shore and is squeezing the water out of the bottom of her pink coverup. From how her halo braid immaculately rests like a crown atop her head, Andy knows Nile must have won the play-fight by pushing Joe into the water and gotten away before he could splash her back. 

Like the tides being pulled by the moon, Joe waves cheerfully at Andy and Nicky, sensing Nicky’s distress, even from a distance. Only after they lock eyes does Nicky turn his attention back to Andy. “Quynh is to you as Joe is to me. You do not need to apologize for how your pain has changed you.”

Nicky’s eyes are deep with sorrow and understanding, but Andy can only regretfully think about the empty gaps in her mind where there should be hundreds of precious moments spent with her family. Joe and Nicky’s weddings, the first training sessions to integrate Booker into their team, the chaos of learning how to drive for the first time - her anguish had stolen away all the joys and marvels of those memories. 

“I should have done better by you. And by Joe and by Booker.” Looking back, Andy knows her bitterness played a role in fueling Booker’s own disdain for immortality. Their shared grief for their lost loved ones had amplified the losses they had experienced. She thinks about how Joe and Nicky had been the first to offer comforting words when Booker’s wife and children passed away, and how they had been the ones to provide grounding embraces and comforting cups of tea on the nights Nile’s grief became too much for her to bear. 

Joe and Nicky had always been the first line of defense in the face of emotional wounds, but the hope that Nile had rekindled in her when she came into their lives led Andy to resolve to find meaning in their lives once more. But her change of heart had come too late for Booker, and they had lost another one of their own. “I’m sorry, Nicky.” 

Nicky offers her a soft smile of acceptance. He knows the guilt Andy has felt for hundreds of years, and he knows she has been trying to be more present since the lab catastrophe. The empty space left behind by their youngest brother and shared regret for past actions lingers unspoken between them. “We understand, Andy. There is nothing to forgive.” He leans back to meet her eyes. “I only ask that you try not to push us away this time. It hurts us more when you suffer on your own.”

Andy breathes out a chuckle. “Is this when you tell me that we’re not meant to be alone?” She thinks back to the woman in France who patched up her wounds. “Hate to tell you, but someone’s already beat you to it, Nicky.” 

He hums in amusement. “Whoever did is very wise. Perhaps they are one of my descendants. A cousin many times removed perhaps?” His lips curl upwards in a teasing smile, and Andy feels herself smiling back. She cups the back of his neck fondly, and the beach doesn’t feel as thick with remorse anymore. There’s a part of her that still threatens to drag her back into herself, and her soul still feels tethered to the ocean; but, Andy knows now that with Nicky, Joe, and Nile (and Booker) by her side, she can find the strength to fight again.

“I’ll do better this time, Nicky. I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter is inspired by a verse from For the Lover that I Lost (planning on the first three chapters to center around Andy and the next three to center around Quynh).
> 
> Coming soon: Andy and a meal shared with the ones she loves.


End file.
